Breaking Up Bottlenecks

Building a high-performance team can be challenging, to say the least. For true success, its members must share a common vision and work together within an efficient framework. Why do some leaders have success while others fail?

​Our model this month, is William H. Taft, 27th U.S. President (1909-1913), and also Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1921-1930). Taft is the only person to have held the highest office in both the executive and judicial branches of the U.S. government. While history generally remembers presidents more than chief justices, Taft’s reform of our judicial system resulted in a strong Supreme Court and a cohesive court system that clears a docket of over 100 million cases each year. To lay the groundwork for this success, Taft focused on two important areas.    

1. Government Bottlenecks – When Taft was confirmed as Supreme Court Chief Justice on June 30, 1921, the court’s docket was congested by war litigation and an enormous (and growing) backlog of cases, which flowed automatically out of the circuit courts of appeals. In addition, many of the lower courts were mired by inefficiencies and crowded dockets that delayed the delivery of decisions, sometimes by years. Taft considered this a gross denial of justice, stating, “A rich man can stand the delay… but the poor man always suffers.” Immediately, he approached the Attorney General to discuss new legislation, and passionately campaigned for support during congressional hearings, in speeches he made throughout the country, and in articles he wrote for legal periodicals.
   
   ​Reform arrived in stages. In 1922, Congress voted to provide 24 additional district court judges to manage the lower court caseload, to empower the Chief Justice to temporarily transfer judges from overstaffed districts to understaffed districts, and to establish the “Conference of Senior Circuit Judges” (now called the Judicial Conference), an annual meeting of the senior appellate judges from each circuit that, under the direction of the Chief Justice, discussed potential judiciary reform and made proposals to Congress.
   
   With the lower courts beginning to operate more efficiently, Taft proposed legislation to grant the Supreme Court greater control over its docket. Arguing that appeals should be handled by the circuit court in all but very specific circumstances, Taft lobbied for cases to receive consideration by the Justices only if granted a writ of certiorari (the legal document issued when the Supreme Court agrees to hear a case). In 1925, after three years of aggressive lobbying, Congress passed the so-called “Judges’ Bill” (so named because it was authored and championed by judges), which drastically increased the authority and independence of the Supreme Court by converting the majority of its mandatory jurisdiction into discretionary jurisdiction. Within months of each stage of reform, Taft was able to show a remarkable reduction in the backlog of cases.
   
   
2. Team Unity – Taft believed a judiciary that operated as a team would be more organized, efficient and effective. After addressing the most pressing need of overloaded dockets, he turned his attention to establishing “smoother relations within the judicial system.” In a series of personal letters, Taft reached out to every district judge, soliciting their input for national reform in judicial procedure, to every circuit judge, seeking advice to make circuit dockets manageable nationwide, and to every state supreme court justice, asking for help establishing a united federal approach to decision making. “Heretofore,” he said, “each judge has paddled his own canoe and has done the best he could with his district… He is likely to cooperate much more readily in an organized effort to get rid of business and do justice than under the ‘go-as-you-please’ system of our federal judges.”
   
   Creating a sense of teamwork, however, required more than giving the courts a national voice. Taft knew each judge must also learn to prioritize compromise and shared success over personal victory, so he led by example. In nearly ten years of service on the Supreme Court, Taft dissented only 20 times, and only four times in writing. “Most dissents, elaborated,” he said, “are a form of egotism.” Taft held a policy of open discussion in his Court, and encouraged Justices to carefully craft opinions meeting the concerns of all decision makers whenever possible. He taught his Justices to restrict their opinions to the essentials of each issue, and to avoid any confrontation not directly necessary to the task before them. Taft, himself, struck a discussion of Congress’s Commerce Clause from one of his published opinions in deference to a fellow Justice’s opposing view, stating, “It is the duty of us all to control our personal preferences to the main object of the Court – which is to do effective justice.” Incredibly, the decisions coming out of Taft’s Court were 84% unanimous. (By contrast, within ten years of his retirement from the Court, only 39% of the decisions were unanimous, with a figure hovering closer to 29% today.
   
   While building high-performance teams is challenging, Taft’s approach shows us it’s possible when we focus our efforts on creating efficient workflows and a mindset of cooperation. What bottlenecks reduce the productivity of your teams? Do priorities need realignment from personal to shared goals? Answer these questions, and you’re on your way to success.

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